50 Days In India (BH:D50)

September 22, 2011

Soundtrack of the movie 'The Dark Knight' works rather well as background when one is mopping the floor. I pretended to be the Joker janitor hatching sinister plans as I reintroduced the moppy head to every nook and cranny of the house. Well, exclusively nooks since I don't know where the crannies are. 

The TDK OST is a fair enough masculine substitute for the exceptionally estrogen emitting soundtracks Hollywood has generated throughout its history to go with sweeping and cleaning activities. The hand that rocks the cradle may rule the world but the hairy masculine hand that moves the mop while listening to 'Agent of Chaos' will have delusions of world domination.

If there is one thing these 50 days in Thiruvananthapuram has taught me, it is that cheap mobile communication technology has taken gossiping to the next level. While it has become easy to conduct frivulous talk about other people's lives, there is the danger that anything presented as fact can immediately be subjected to verification by a phone call. 

Yesterday, while at the Hercules car dealership, there was a family sitting on one of the glass topped round table. From the fragrance around the table, they certainly were "gulf mallus." A husband who looked much older than his age, a wife who managed to accomplish the opposite, their boy, their girl, the quintessential uncle. By the time I managed to get into the auditory range of their conversation, the husband had made some remark about something his mother had said. "Angane paranjo?!" (Did she say that?!) responded the wife with a dramatic incredulity that rounded her Impala shaded lips into a near perfect O. "Njan chodikatte" (Let me ask) she reached for the phone lying on the table couched in its pouch. 

Here's an aside that must be made: If you are calling an Indian on a mobile, please allow time for the ring to rise up from inside a nearly soundproof pouch in which the phone is invariably kept. If you are lucky and the sound manages to reach the owner, then allow more time for him or her to unsheath the device. This usually takes around a minute. If this is done any faster, some untoward button will be pressed and missiles will be launched from the undisclosed location of an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. After these two monumental delays, usually there is the blank staring at the phone for a few seconds to recollect the nature and status of relationship with the caller as revealed by the caller id. It is very easy to spot this exercise. It takes place every now and then on any footpath. In fact, it took place during the lecture yesterday when the speaker, Mr. Thomas received a call when he was on slide 6. It took him an excruciatingly long 45 seconds to figure out how to silence his own phone.

Aside apart, as soon as the wife proceeded to make the call, the husband started shifting uneasily in his chair. The kids looked like they have seen it all before. I was impressed that the mother-in-law was on speed dial. I couldn't pay more attention to the misery of the hubby because Sanoj, the sales rep, was holding out a bunch of business cards and like a magician, was asking me to pick one.

If it was Hans Zimmer who made the mopping exciting, it was the genius of Ahmet Koc that kept up my energy levels all morning for the translation work. The Hindu newspaper carried an article on the rising numbers of small-scale publishers in the city. Inspiring. I will try to get appointments with a few of them to learn about the business. 

Our old home, where my cousin lives now, as mentioned earlier, was built in 1954. Clearly, it was built when everything was meant to last till eternity. Achan bought the house in 1980 from a film producer called Pareekutty Muthalali. His production house was called Chandrathara Pictures. The house had the same name and Achan kept it since it matched Amma's name. So when Tara was born a year later, there wasn't any trouble in what she should be named. This house was also only a couple of minutes walk across the MG road from Achan's ancestral home, Panamoodu House. Time has come to think about some remodelling and reconstruction. I have gathered some architect contacts, will visit with them soon. Hopefully, there will be a way to reuse the excellent wooden ceiling, doors and windows. 7 lakh people are homeless in Kerala. I will keep that in mind while renovating this second home.

An article on the Grihalakshmi magazine on Thiruvanathapuram said that at one time in history, the city had more Punna (dilo) tree than coconut trees. The memory of this still survives in the common place and house names: Punnamoodu, Punnapuram etc. The search for the English name of Punna took me to the excellent online resource called Encyclopaedia Indica.

Albert Einstein would never have dreamt that he would become a model for Kerala Police. A huge hoarding of Einstein in a yellow thermoplastic hard hat stands at Vellayambalam Junction urging two-wheeler riders to wear a helmet "if they value their heads". I understand that the point of the ad would have been lost if Einstein was shown wearing a full face helmet with visor down, but a half motorcycle helmet or a half open full helmet revealing the physicist's face would have been better than showing him in a plastic hard hat. But I guess, in Kerala, where some drunk dudes at night, on headlamp-less motorcycles, manage to achieve velocities close to that of light, road safety is indeed relative!

The stock market crash news kept the media occupied all afternoon. Biggest decline in Indian Sensex in 26 months, down over 700 points. Lot of rumors of the impending real estate and gold collapse in India. Much of the blame put on Bernanke and the Fed's gloomy outlook expressed yesterday. Also fighting to take the blame were P. Chidambaram, the home minister and Pranab Mukherjee, the finance minister, whose cabinet infighting had come out in the open yesterday. If P. Chidambaram also goes there, then Tamil can ask for first language status alongside Hindi inside Tihar jail. 

Since this is the 50th edition of these notes, I will go ahead and write down the story I had mentioned earlier but never got around to write. A memory from the USA. 

It is about the Indian ritual of religiously pressing a new vehicle into service. What is pressed in reality are couple of lemons under the two front wheels! Some, in an effort to assert their half-hearted non-conformation with these outdated traditions, put only one lemon under a wheel. Even then they wonder if the left or right one is auspicious. The whole ritual involves breaking a coconut in front of the vehicle, garlanding it, putting sandal paste on its grille and windshield. Essentially a car is treated like a sacred cow.

A few years ago, when the apartment complex in Bryan I used to stay still hadn't changed it name from Casa Blanca to Trebeca Square, there was a young Indian couple staying in the apartment close to the manager's office. I think the husband worked as a post-doc in some department and the wife was a jobless apartmentwife. 

After a few months, they bought a second hand car. Honda Civic. Its previous owner was a non-Hindu, WASP who might have done many ungodly things in that car. So the couple decided not to spare any effort in conducting a full fledged Hindu cleansing ritual. 

The car was to be reborn as a car, but a Hindu one this time.

Since sandal paste couldn't be found, a bit of saffron from the wife's make-up kit was used. Since garland couldn't be found, a thread with a series of chilies skewered onto it, like a flexible chilly kabab with a lemon acting as stopper at the bottom was used. 

A friend of the couple, possibly a member of the ardently patriotic and Hindu right wing party who had now gone to USA so that he could effectively serve his motherland, was assisting and supervising them in this spiritual process.

Finally the moment came to squeeze the lemon. 

The wife picked the blessed fruit for the deed. 

Greenish yellow, near perfect sphere, obviously high caste. 

She held it close her sternum and mumbled something. Then it was passed onto the supervisor who broke into an inaudible Sanskrit rap song. Finally the hubby was tasked to say the final goodbye to the lemon before carefully placing it under the front right tire. 

He got into the car. Touched the steering wheel with both hands, brought the hands to his religiously closed eyes. The supervisor signaled with his head after consulting his watch that the time was "good". 

Planets and stars were aligned for the squishing. 

Husband started the engine, went from P to D (gears) and ever so gently tapped the gas pedal. The car went over the lemon as if in slow motion.

This was no sissy Indian lemon on which such rituals had been perfected.

This one was all-American. 

Texas tough. 

It stood its ground. 

It kept its shape. 

No squishing happened. 

The supervisor fell on the ground on all fours for careful inspection. The husband waited in the car. Beads of sweat on forehead. The a/c hadn't kicked in. It was an old car. It was a Texas summer afternoon. 

In a few seconds, the supervisor evolved into a biped vigorously shaking his head. Alarm! 

Wife's right palm automatically went to cover her open mouth. Gods weren't going to be pleased. The lemon was not squeezed. 

The husband looked helplessly to the supervisor for direction. Surely there is something in the millions of lines of scriptures about what is to be done if a Texas lemon remains unsquished by a Honda Civic. Of course there was! The supervisor had read it. It has been taught to him in the Sunday veda classes. 

"Go back, come back" said the supervisor moving his arm with its index finger pointing outwards in a quick sideways motion as if an umpire who terribly hates the batsman on strike would signal a boundary he had just struck. 

A friend in need is a friend indeed.

The hubby was relieved. D to R. Ever so gently backwards. His sweat drenched tshirt now stuck to the backrest.

The supervisor de-evolved into a reptile. He crawled to the culprit lemon and lodged it firmly into the treads of the wheel. No more slippage risk. He came back to the eye level of the driver. His eyebrows went way up signalling the strength and intensity of acceleration he expected the hubby to apply. 

Clutching the steering wheel firmly in the 10:10 position, the husband slammed on the gas pedal. The lemon wasn't going to escape this time. 

The engine roared. 

The car jumped and crashed straight into the wall behind. 

The gear change from R to D had been forgotten in the spiritual hurry and the sweaty worry. 

A quarter of the wall which carried the apt mailboxes cracked and collapsed ever-so-slowly.

The ritual was done. With the management fine for property destruction, it amounted to $1200. 

Expensive ritual! 

At that price, it is equivalent to breaking 6000 coconuts. 

Very auspicious!